As kids, we used to play that game called “broken telephone“. Other names for this game included, “operator“, “grapevine” or “pass it down“. It involved a chain of kids that would relay a short but quickly spoken phrase, rather silently. By the time the phrase reached the last kid, the phrase would be completely distorted and in many ways funnier than the original one.
The following is excerpted from the movie Johnny Dangerously:
- Lil: Get this to Johnny on the grapevine: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s brother at the Savoy Theater tomorrow night. Got it?
- Polly: Got it.
- Polly: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s brother at the savoy theater pass it on.
- Prisoner: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s brother at the Savoy Theater tonight. Pass it on.
- Prisoner: Vermin is going to kill Johnny’s mother at the Savoy Theater tonight. Pass it on.
- Prisoner: Vermin’s mother is going to kill Johnny tonight at the Savoy Theater. Pass it on.
- Prisoner: [gibberish]
- Prisoner: There’s a message on the grapevine, Johnny.
- Johnny: Yeah, what is it?
- Prisoner: Johnny and the Mothers are playin’ “Stompin’ At The Savoy” in Vermont tonight.
- Johnny: Vermin’s going to kill my brother at the Savoy Theater tonight?
- Prisoner: I didn’t say that.
- Johnny: No, but I know this grapevine.
This morning, the news in the domain grapevine had it that a domain name, Israel.com, had sold for $5.88 million via Moniker’s auction platform. Before noon was over, blog after blog and forum after forum had passed along the information, adding their own little twist to the story. Some said the buyer was an Israeli tycoon, others said it was a Jewish woman investor from a large corporation in New York City. Others, preferred to ponder how much Israel.mobi would sell for.
It turns out that the domain was not sold after all. So much for the rich Jewish lady from NYC; if you know her, I’d like to get her number.
The point is, today’s media possess powers that by far exceed those of the traditional media. In the old days of centralized points of information, the newspaper with the false piece of news would frantically retract all the issues and the poorly-paid paperboys would deliver a fresh edition of the news. On the radio or the tv, an announcement would be made, correcting the mistake – obvious or not – and everything would be put in place, more or less.
After news of the alleged sale broke out, the Moniker people scrambled to issue frantic statements that no such sale had taken place; but by that time, the cat was out of the bag: blogs relay news in a non-linear fashion, they beam out information to all directions, that is picked up from other info processing points on the web; some are rather influential in the way that such information is passed along. All of a sudden, a non-sale became a sale.
So bloggers, amateur or semi-pro, be careful out there: the grapevine game has consequences. Double-check your sources, or better still, differentiate from the rest of the media and provide content, criticism and analysis on your blogs, instead of plain xeroxing of random press releases.
Now, did you hear the one about the upcoming sale of a two-word, hyphenated IDN .mobi for over seven figures?
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